OneNote: Preliminary Thoughts
Posted by zeoli
on 9/4/2004
zeoli
9/4/2004 5:44 pm
I've been using OneNote for about 48 hours now; plenty of experience to venture an opinion about it.
First impression: This is an odd program, like none other I've seen. It has some very powerful features, while other basic features are absent.
Essentially, it is a collection of information building blocks. This paragraph, for instance, would be a basic information item. It can stand alone or be clustered with other paragraphs that form a larger note. In this way, it resembles BrainStorm. Each item can be moved with relative ease, or flagged for further categorization.
These items or clusters of items reside on notebook pages, which make in turn reside in tabbed sections. Tabbed sections can be further categorized by residing in folders.
Here are some of the strengths of OneNote, as I see them:
A. Outlining ability is surprisingly nimble. It is not NoteMap by any means, but more powerful than the outliner in Word. What is especially nice is that you can create multiple outlines within each page. As the notebook structure itself -- with folders and subfolders (the tabbed sections) -- is a mega-outline of your data, you are essentially creating outlines that are themselves part of an outline.
B. Acceptable information capture. Pop open what they call a side note and drag any text or graphics into it. It's stored in a special section called SideNotes. Later, you open OneNote and move the new information pages to the sections you desire. It has a screen clip feature, that I thought would be kind of useless, but which I've discovered is pretty handy for quickly capturing material from forms or complex web pages and saving them to side notes. This info is not, of course, editable or searchable. However, you can flag it for later retrieval (see next feature).
C. Note flags allow you to add an extra layer of categorization to individual items. You can mark an item as a To Do, for instance, and then see a list of all To Do items throughout your notes. Flags can be customized to provide you with iconic bullets that visually mark the text and with special highlighting.
The weaknesses:
A. It appears that OneNote lacks the ability to import OLE objects--I think Stephen Diamond might have commented on this a while ago, come to think of it. What an odd omission for Microsoft!
B. The editing power is a bit limited as well. There is no extended selection when you double click on a word and swipe forward.
C. Moving items around is a little awkward... some move operations allow you to use drag and drop and with others you have to use a navigator dialog box.
D. No facility to create tables in your notes. I think it is clear that MS didn't want to give too much editing power to OneNote, because it might become a substitute for Word.
My mid-term grade: B- but with potential. I'd be interested in other opinions.
Steve Z.
First impression: This is an odd program, like none other I've seen. It has some very powerful features, while other basic features are absent.
Essentially, it is a collection of information building blocks. This paragraph, for instance, would be a basic information item. It can stand alone or be clustered with other paragraphs that form a larger note. In this way, it resembles BrainStorm. Each item can be moved with relative ease, or flagged for further categorization.
These items or clusters of items reside on notebook pages, which make in turn reside in tabbed sections. Tabbed sections can be further categorized by residing in folders.
Here are some of the strengths of OneNote, as I see them:
A. Outlining ability is surprisingly nimble. It is not NoteMap by any means, but more powerful than the outliner in Word. What is especially nice is that you can create multiple outlines within each page. As the notebook structure itself -- with folders and subfolders (the tabbed sections) -- is a mega-outline of your data, you are essentially creating outlines that are themselves part of an outline.
B. Acceptable information capture. Pop open what they call a side note and drag any text or graphics into it. It's stored in a special section called SideNotes. Later, you open OneNote and move the new information pages to the sections you desire. It has a screen clip feature, that I thought would be kind of useless, but which I've discovered is pretty handy for quickly capturing material from forms or complex web pages and saving them to side notes. This info is not, of course, editable or searchable. However, you can flag it for later retrieval (see next feature).
C. Note flags allow you to add an extra layer of categorization to individual items. You can mark an item as a To Do, for instance, and then see a list of all To Do items throughout your notes. Flags can be customized to provide you with iconic bullets that visually mark the text and with special highlighting.
The weaknesses:
A. It appears that OneNote lacks the ability to import OLE objects--I think Stephen Diamond might have commented on this a while ago, come to think of it. What an odd omission for Microsoft!
B. The editing power is a bit limited as well. There is no extended selection when you double click on a word and swipe forward.
C. Moving items around is a little awkward... some move operations allow you to use drag and drop and with others you have to use a navigator dialog box.
D. No facility to create tables in your notes. I think it is clear that MS didn't want to give too much editing power to OneNote, because it might become a substitute for Word.
My mid-term grade: B- but with potential. I'd be interested in other opinions.
Steve Z.
srdiamond15
9/5/2004 5:12 am
I think the developers would be interested in your comments. You should post it to the Micrsoft OneNote public board.
The way they present it, they were faced with an abundance of Office features, and they intend to incorporate many more as the program matures. I think they were largely concerned about maintaining the identity of OneNote as a notetaking program. As far as I've been able to tell, you can't even countrol the spacing of text. Whether more formatting power is in the offing, I don't know, but I think it's safe to say that it will soon have a real tables feature.
My strongest concern is with the awkwardness in moving items to different sections on folders. There are just more steps than would seem necessary. But here's the underlying dilemma. In OneNote a section corresponds to a Windows _file_. So, moving a page to another section involves taking out a part of a file and pasting it in the appropriate position in another file. Whether representing sections as Windows files limits the interface that can be imposed on these operations, it is a somewhat complex matter to move a page to another section in one fell swoop.
Most of these quasi-database programs sem to represent the whole data structure as a single file. This simplifies backup and, I presume, makes it more straightforward to move pages anywhere you want. Wherever you go, it is still part of a single file. (Maybe someone who knows a little programming will say this is preposterous. That's possible.)
I imagine Microsoft opted to make a section a file, instead of making a file correspond to the "My Notebook" folder, because its multi-media capabilities would otherwise produce files too large to run efficiently.
The way they present it, they were faced with an abundance of Office features, and they intend to incorporate many more as the program matures. I think they were largely concerned about maintaining the identity of OneNote as a notetaking program. As far as I've been able to tell, you can't even countrol the spacing of text. Whether more formatting power is in the offing, I don't know, but I think it's safe to say that it will soon have a real tables feature.
My strongest concern is with the awkwardness in moving items to different sections on folders. There are just more steps than would seem necessary. But here's the underlying dilemma. In OneNote a section corresponds to a Windows _file_. So, moving a page to another section involves taking out a part of a file and pasting it in the appropriate position in another file. Whether representing sections as Windows files limits the interface that can be imposed on these operations, it is a somewhat complex matter to move a page to another section in one fell swoop.
Most of these quasi-database programs sem to represent the whole data structure as a single file. This simplifies backup and, I presume, makes it more straightforward to move pages anywhere you want. Wherever you go, it is still part of a single file. (Maybe someone who knows a little programming will say this is preposterous. That's possible.)
I imagine Microsoft opted to make a section a file, instead of making a file correspond to the "My Notebook" folder, because its multi-media capabilities would otherwise produce files too large to run efficiently.
jackcrawford
9/5/2004 7:58 am
Thanks for the info Steve.
How does OneNote handle Outlook emails (inc attachments)?
TIA
Jack
How does OneNote handle Outlook emails (inc attachments)?
TIA
Jack
sub
9/6/2004 3:30 pm
[ As the notebook structure itself -- with folders and subfolders (the tabbed sections) -- is a mega-outline of your data, you are essentially creating outlines that are themselves part of an outline ]
Is there some kind of cloning or internal linking? I imagine that as an outline grows in complexity, more and more references will concern entries that are located in distant positions within the hierarchy.
alx
Is there some kind of cloning or internal linking? I imagine that as an outline grows in complexity, more and more references will concern entries that are located in distant positions within the hierarchy.
alx